Harpsichord Suites
by Corpses and Cats
Summary: After marrying a terrible man, an archduchess wishes herself away in her dreams, awakening near the Labyrinth.
1. Chapter 1

She had all any lady could want. The finest silk and exquisite lace. Diamonds, servants, and all the luxury such a life of extravagance entailed.

She had all any lady could want, but isolation set her apart from the other women of the realm. Their balls, their evenings on the lake, and their grand flair for all things granted by their wealth and prestige.

No, she had none of that. Not from a lack of interest or acceptance by those in the stories she read but from the dangers her identity could bring to her being through her father's enemies.

It was a cruel reality; her bookshelves stretching across walls were aligned with epic tales of princes, princesses, and happily ever afters, but none of that could be hers. It was a future she had long abandoned, one that was to remain in her dreams. She was an archduchess who could never be known as such.

While wealth presented little compassion, she had only music at her side to provide the daydreams of romance. The piano was her art, her lover, her reason to refuse the offer of despair.

Despair did make itself known though, the torment of isolation reaching out to tear her heart and numb her soul. Too frequently she had come close to burying herself in the abysmal sorrow, but it was never worth it. She had decided happiness was a choice, and she intended to stay away from the depths of loneliness in favor of keeping her place in the world she had created through the caresses of music and fantasies of literature. It was both a prison and an escape, binding her mind yet freeing her to safely imagine life outside the estate and concert halls.

The rest of the world was a mysterious place, larger and crueler than she could imagine. She wondered if it could be as big as the lands described within the pages of the novels she collected, and she could not always keep away from dwelling on the inability to know.

"Do you suppose it's true?" she inquired, glancing to one of the books atop the violet silk of her bed.

"That what is, my lady?"

"That the seas never end." She looked back to the mirror near her side, eyes of azure shifting down the reflection to the servant altering the hem of her velvet, maroon dress.

"Well, I don't know about none of that, Lucinda." she answered, shaking her head a bit but smiling. "I would hope not, for the sailors' sake."

The young servant swept a loose strand of caramel colored hair behind her ear before snipping off a fraying thread hanging from the dress' edge. She lowered the scissors and began to rethread a needle.

"Much better!" she decided after completing the work on the dress, removing the pins and moving back to examine the finished hem.

Lucinda stepped off the platform, crossing the room to fold her arms over the window sill, gazing at the lively forest situated behind her quaint home. It was not a mansion, but it was much more than many others had. Her father did not wish to attract attention to her residence, though he still provided her with a nice estate close to town, in the countryside and far from the small kingdom's capital.

Elsewhere in the home, a grandfather clock began to ring out its intervals in announcing the start of a new hour.

Lucinda turned to the servant as she quickened the pace of cleaning the area and exclaimed, "We're running out of time! Now we only have an hour to get you ready and across town for rehearsal!"

"Oh! I should not have mentioned fixing the dress!" Lucinda responded and sighed, hastily grabbing an amethyst necklace from a dresser surface and clasping it around her neck.

The servant shoved a pincushion into one of Lucinda's shelves for the time being, between a turquoise glass hydra and a leather bound book.

"That does not match!" she proclaimed while hurrying Lucinda through a threshold and into the next room.

"I'm being creative!" Lucinda defended the jewelry as she took her seat at a cherry oak vanity table.

The servant proceeded to withdraw the needed items from the drawers, getting to work making Lucinda as presentable as possible in the least amount of time. She ended up spending more time on her hair than her makeup- brushing it out, smoothing frizz down, and pulling some strands on each side of her head back to braid while the majority flowed freely down her back in golden spirals.

While the brush was pulled through her hair, Lucinda rambled about the songs the orchestra had been working on. She spoke with great excitement, describing how it felt as though the sheets of music were moving rather than her eyes, the notes scrolling to the rhythm they established. The only things to remain constant were the ten lines, the remnants of order among the key changes and the discordant beauty weaving in and out in both unity and diversity.

#

A single letter would seal her doom. When it was intercepted, he expected to find a message from an administrator of a neighboring kingdom, the usual talks of diplomatic compromise and allied efforts.

Instead it was a letter of praise and promises to visit; in it, the king expressed his intentions to attend an upcoming orchestral performance.

He glanced to the courier's corpse as he removed leather gloves to open the letter, making note of the envelope's lack of a royal seal. It was a strange absence, but he had tracked the messenger from the castle many leagues back.

From one of his pockets he produced a tattered sheet of parchment, unfolding it to compare with the letter he had acquired from the messenger who now laid a few meters from the body of his horse, a single slice in his neck and two arrows embedded in his mount's head. The dark, pooling blood glimmered only slightly in the shadows as it soaked into the dirt, coating bits of rocks while it drained from the corpse.

The assassin stepped over the boy splayed out facedown in the mud and dirt, departing the overbearing darkness of the forest. Over a hill the land cleared into a countryside of plains, the curve of a river visible toward where the orange crescent of the moon's underside hung in the sky, filtering through the openings of the wispy stretches of clouds that were obscuring the stars.

Without the shade of the trees, the documents' scrawls came more into view under the man's amber eyes. These eyes were the brightest aspect he possessed; he wore only black, and his dark hair challenged the feathers of a raven in dominance over the night's hue. His skin was light, but not drastically so; it was the skin of a man who rarely if ever saw sunlight but may have had an average tone otherwise.

After careful examination, he could conclude the new letter was indeed from the king - but to whom? No names were used, but perhaps the message would still be of interest.

#

By the next afternoon, the letter had passed into another man's hands.

"Wonderful, Max, wonderful…"

The message's final carrier gave a brief nod, maintaining a kneel before the desk. His indifferent gaze rose to his master.

The man at the desk was well dressed, and the hair lining the edges of his face was neatly kept. Red sleeves were gathered at his wrists, and a dark brown, tailored waistcoat with black accents was draped over the back of his chair.

"Is it what you seek?" Max inquired. His voice was soft and low, silky and reserved.

"Not in the least! But this is more interesting; perhaps more so than the drama going on with Marquis Something-or-Another or border disputes, though I have been wanting you to get me an upper hand in fighting the recent surges of arrests in Kiy'gsil. As you can imagine, I do not take kindly to profit loss. Not to mention my salesmen dying off." He shook his head, shuffling through a stack of papers he had gathered in his hands from a drawer. He closed that drawer with his foot while leaning back in his chair and looking to Max again, smiling pleasantly; he continued, "You do not look too thrilled with your achievement."

Max's gaze did not move, and his expression remained constant. The letter was interesting, but he felt no reason for too much excitement.

"I really don't care."

His master laughed, placing the documents at the edge of his desk and lacing his fingers together beneath his chin with his elbows on the black surface.

"Of course you don't; when do you care?" His lips spread into a wide grin. It was what made the young man a great servant, unfaltering indifference and disconnected emotions. Max was so quiet though that speaking to him often transitioned into speaking to himself.

The door behind Max swung out into the hallway, revealing a tall woman whose boots tapped loudly upon the floor as she entered, striding around Max. Her skin was lighter than any he had seen, and her eyes were covered in black makeup.

"Dietrich!" She pushed papers across the desk and out of her way, seating herself on the edge and swinging her legs up and across as the man pulled his arms back, placing her feet on the opposite side atop the documents, one ankle over the other. Some of her black dress draped the front of the desk; the fabric of the dress' sides and back was much longer than in the front, scandalously exposing the fair skin just above her knees and down.

Dietrich smirked as she pouted, her lips covered in a very dark red lipstick. She did not have a single care that Max was observing; she laid across the desk, bringing her knees up to cross her legs and scrape across the table with her heels. An extravagant, wide brimmed hat fell from her thick hair as a few papers drifted off the table, floating to the floor.

"You have been in your silly little office all morning long!" she lamented. "That's no fun."

"But vengeance is." he replied. He reached out for a handful of her hair, then looked to Max. "You're dismissed; come back later for a new assignment. I'll send Tori to summon you when I have another together."

Indeed he did; after a few hours during which Max ate lunch and sat around to rest while he had the chance, Tori found him in the antiquated house's dining room doing nothing.

"Aren't you bored sitting alone in the dark?" she inquired, one of her fingerless-gloved hands at her hip. (Not to say that her hands were gloved and fingerless, but that her gloves were without fingers.) When it was clear he did not feel obligated to reply, she rolled her eyes but smiled fondly, shaking her head.

"Well, come on now, Dietrich wants you." she stated.

He rose and followed her upstairs. The old steps creaked under their boots, and the banister was too flimsy to grasp. Spiders had laid claim upon the parallel bars beneath the railing, thick cobwebs accumulating in the spaces. One step was in particularly awful shape, almost half of it subjected to dry rot, full of white and yellow fungi.

Tori and Max were careful to step over it, the latter of the two sneering just for an instant when the musty smell assaulted his senses. Dietrich had already tried to restore the damage, but it was a lost cause; Tori simply enjoyed the decaying surroundings and demanded them to remain.

When they entered, Dietrich gestured to two chairs. Max retrieved both from against the wall while the crime lord began to speak, "I still have some thinking to do on that letter, but while I'm determining what should be done, you will retrieve some goods for me in the capital. Rescue prisoners if it's not much trouble, but they can replaced, so just focus on collecting the drugs that have been confiscated. I invested too much into that to lose over half the shipment from Kaisenyuu."

Max's eyes drifted to the gunk under Tori's fingernails. While her lover spoke, she was focused on picking off black clumps at the side edges of one of her nails, scraping flakes off with the thumb of the opposite hand. When she started to nibble at a skin tag, Max returned his vision to Dietrich as he continued on, "I'm currently coordinating a stop to all this law enforcement nonsense. My work needs to be left alone, or the royal courts will be dying off faster than Tori can raid a cemetery."

"Don't count on it." Tori commented, looking over to him with a smirk.

"You may leave now, Max. Arm yourself and get going."


	2. Chapter 2

With Max gone, Dietrich would decide on another man to investigate the letter's significance. His selection was an older man he had worked with for many years, a wealthy plantation owner. As such, his presence at the symphony would raise no suspicions; he looked no different than the other gentlemen attending.

It was a little over a week later when Simon arrived at the spacious concert hall, taking a seat amongst the crowd and exchanging pleasantries with those who filled in around him. His eyes targeted the only female musician of the group while he thought of the king's letter. The use of pronouns had indicated its recipient would be a lady, and the male dominated orchestra made it all too easy to know who he was meant to find. Her turquoise dress glittered softly, its brilliance joining that of the shining metal instruments.

Simon slipped away from the audience as the performance was nearing its end. A servant opened the wide, brass doors as he approached, and he stepped from the layers of wood flooring to the marble of the empty foyer.

The first movement was not Lucinda's favorite. Strict form adherence had bound its composer to a precise balance and limited expression. She was not one to reject proper etiquette, but she felt music was no place for guidelines, regulations, and absolute order. When music is predictable, it is not a realistic representation of imagination, emotion, and life.

Regardless, she made the best of what she was responsible to play, abandoning her thoughts to surrender herself to the static bass lines and the melodies reluctant to shift. It was a fair exchange for the later music of the concert she had fallen in love with.

It was not too horribly long before the applause came and musicians headed backstage to put away instruments. Lucinda was stopped after she passed through a door backstage into a hallway.

"Miss, I have not seen you since you were such a small one."

She flinched as a hand landed on her shoulder, and she looked up to a pleasantly smiling man.

"Oh, you... know me?" she inquired. She took a step back and glanced to others as they walked by, softly chattering and discussing their performance while crossing the floor to head out to the foyer.

"Of course I do! You do not have remembrance of me, but I remember you, certainly. He always with such pride told me of your talents, but I was guilty of doubting his words. Had to see for myself, and his praises turned out to be true."

Lucinda's discomfort began to fade, and a smile lit her eyes as it formed on her red lips. "You must be close to my father then!" There was no way he would know of her otherwise.

"Oh, yes, we go way back. Now, what is it you have going on? It has been too long since I've had the chance to speak with him." He pondered for a moment before continuing, "Do I recall word of a man in your life? Perhaps it was in a letter he mentioned it to me. Your intended must be very trusted by your father for a betrothal to have even been considered."

"Indeed," Lucinda nodded, "He is his doctor, and he used to be a highly ranked general. What is it that makes a good general? Is it strength, or something else?"

"I would imagine strength to be an important factor. But a good general would be both one who cares about his men and one who is known by his impressive victories and impressive leadership qualities."

Lucinda was pleased enough with the answer, but thoughts of doubt surfaced her mind often. She could not help but to worry about what her husband would be like. Her concerns were reasonable, she hoped, but guilt easily crept into her mind as a torturous accompaniment. She had no reason to lose faith in her father's judgment and the selection for her, but despite knowing better, her worries remained, shadowing her hopes.

"Do you know Anton?" she asked the gentleman before her.

"I am afraid not, my dear. I do not suppose your marriage will be a large event?"

"No…" she answered softly before loosing herself in her thoughts, her attention on the stories she loved. Knowing it would not be a grand event worthy of a fairytale was nothing new, but to have any other wedding seemed more painful than to have nothing. If nothing could come close to a comparison of a royal wedding, why try anything else at all? All or nothing felt less cruel than full disappointment.

"I thought as much," Simon mused as he observed the distant girl. He looked over his shoulder as the orchestra director approached and called out, "Lucinda, you perfected your dynamics as I asked. I was pleased."

"Is anything ever perfect?" she inclined her head in contemplation. The director chuckled and acknowledged her response with a smile of approval before carrying on to pass through the corridor.

Though he was gone, Lucinda continued, "Anyone can always find something that need improvement, even without knowledge of what exactly is going on or is intended to be presented as."

"Lucinda, when will you marry Anton?" Simon pressed for information, committing her name to memory for Dietrich.

"Oh, that… thirteen more days." she answered, and he detected a great assortment of dread, worry, and even disdain in her voice and brilliant eyes; however, he did not question any of it, nor did he offer encouragement.

"Where?"

At this question she finally became hesitant, her eyes avoiding his face and her feet moving without certainty. Her steps were small, and the unease within her eyes joined the discomfort that pushed her to nervously fidget with the sleeves of her dress past her wrists.

Simon remained calm, patient even, and he presented another question, "What troubles you?" His smile widened, and he stated, "You know you can trust me."

Lucinda responded slowly, "I do not know you."

As he took a step forward, she took two quick steps back and lamented, "Oh, I've said too much already! I cannot-" She gasped as he closed in on her and grabbed a fistful of golden hair. His patience was spent, and his demeanor altered, brows furrowed and smile gone.

"Where is it?" he snarled, his glare daring her to force him to repeat himself again.

Her heart thundered, and she began to cry out for help, but the man's free hand clasped to her neck. While her panic rose, she glanced around them, cursing herself for having stopped for him to begin with. When she still refused to speak, the pressure against her throat increased, and tears gathered on her eyelashes before beginning their voyage down her skin as her hair was released and her face struck. Her cheek bone ached, and she pressed herself tighter to the wall she was against, choking out, "Okay! Okay!"

She felt fearful, shameful, but above all she felt stupid. She wished someone would come across them, but she knew the stage was empty by now, and those who had seen her had been as blind as she to the threat this man was.

"Vestur Rosmhvalr. A temple in the city Vestur Rosmhvalr." she revealed, trembling as the man stepped back and crossed his arms. She brought her hands to her neck and face. "The temple of She who sees."

She looked down to her feet, mouthing a plea for help. Then she spoke again, "May I leave? Let me go."

"You will tell no one of our meeting." he answered. His tone was softer than before but held the edge of a threat.

"Y-yes, of course."

Soon the man was gone, leaving her alone in the hallway between backstage and the foyer. Lucinda spent some time sitting against the wall, paranoid of her future and exhausted.

The doubts and reluctance she dwelled on before seemed insignificant now as fear held her heart in its frigid grasp. Each day would be worse than the last as her wedding day approached, doom haunting her sleep and bringing her down into such a gloomy state that neither her piano nor books would be touched.

Anton would become the least of her troubles as her imagination crafted horrible scenarios wrought by her foolishness. Thoughts of fire and mutilation were only a few of the disturbing ideas being born to her mind.

Her horrific fantasies were admittedly extreme and unfounded, but the underlying terror was within reason. Whatever would ensue from speaking to the strange man could only bring suffering.


	3. Chapter 3

The waves of the sea shimmered beneath the rising sun while rolling gently onto the shore, falling back and returning rhythmically as the hazy pink light streamed down to meet the pulsing surface on the horizon. White clouds crept through the atmosphere, encroaching toward the sun and slowly consuming the sky.

Lucinda observed the morning from a high balcony at the side of the ancient temple. It was a very well kept and very large structure; its age could not be determined by the condition but by the old dialect preserved in the building's wall scrolls and colorful, engraved paintings and by the outdated architectural styles.

She was content to arrive so early; it was a beautiful place, a small distraction from her fears. During the trip to the city, she had stopped to purchase roses she had placed in the temple upon arrival as an offering to the town's matron goddess. She felt it would change little, but it was at least a comfort to her that even in a stressful time she could still think of another (instead of only herself and her troubles) and give gifts of thought and beauty. Perhaps then she would survive such venomous worry, despite the loss of interest in music.

Lucinda closed the balcony's curtain after hearing more footsteps inside and below as others arrived to join her servants on the ground floor. She knew it would be rude to hide for too long, but for a few more moments she would let the drapery billow gently behind her.

When a servant pulled it aside to step in, Lucinda remained facing the sea, grasping the balcony railing with the force to whiten her knuckles.

"We need more security." she tried to say calmly, but her voice cracked, and she fell into a more emotional state that finally ripped from her throat the sobs she had been withholding for too long.

Her servant did not understand why she spoke of security, but she rushed to Lucinda's side to take her hand then embrace her, being cautious not to transmit makeup to her lady's pale, pink and white dress. She waited for her to finish crying before whispering, "You will be okay. I know it must be scary, but I'm sure you will have a fine husband."

Lucinda sniffed hard and slowly followed her off the balcony, through a wide corridor, and down a flight of elegant stairs. Past the heavily decorated and rather cluttered prayer and offering area, they entered a chamber vibrant with soft music from a string quartet, flutest, and clarinetist, where people were seated and chatting; Lucinda began trembling as silence ensued while eyes turned to her, leaving only a melody in the air that should have been uplifting rather than disturbing as it was to Lucinda. The reaction itself was frightening, coming as a shock to a musician who should have no problem with being in front of others.

"Lucinda, what's wr-" her father began to ask, but he was interrupted by her while he approached.

"How many guards?" she asked, lifting her hands to her face to hide her red eyes and ruined makeup.

"What?"

"How many guards did you bring?" she cried out. He took her wrists, pulling them from her face to lead her away from the small crowd.

He closed a curtain behind them, and Lucinda went to sit on a step while she cried again.

"You must calm down. Oh, what will Anton think of this?" He sighed and added, "Not the best first impression."

He paced in front of her, crossing his arms. When the servant from before joined them, he asked as she bowed, "What bothers her so?"

She shook her head and shrugged, leaning down beside Lucinda to fix her hair.

The king knelt down to be level with her. "You need to tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing…" she managed to squeak out.

He stood again, telling her to return when she was calm. She faintly whispered, "Don't leave me," but he was soon down another hall and joined by two men. She could hear laughter drifting to pervade the temple from the occupied room. Surely they were not laughing at her, but the fear of such blossomed to expand her humiliation.

In a sudden blast, smoke filled the temple with a thick, dark purple haze. Some panicked screams intermingled with it, and chaos ensued with people guided by priests rushing to exits and with breaking out windows that resulted in glass shards embedding in flesh and raining to create a dangerous floor.

Coughing like many others as her lungs were contaminated and her eyes burned, Lucinda too made a dash through the wide halls and rooms to the front of the temple. Upon passing through the threshold and catching a glimpse of the gardens, she was greeted by pain; the top of her shoulder tore as a beast pulled her aside and released a screeching roar that left her ears ringing several seconds afterward.

Lucinda grasped her shoulder and rose where she had fallen, stumbling back as the creature followed her, his steps and massive size directing her farther from the crowd. It possessed two sets of leathery wings. Grey feathers covered its back and sides, but its four legs were scaled and secreting a violet mucous. Its whip like tail matched its black wings, and when it flipped out to the side where Lucinda could see it, she realized it was almost longer than the rest of the body, and small protrusions covered it in rows of razors.

"What is that thing?" a voice cried out while most were leaving the scene, frantically urging their horses onward.

"An old friend of mine, but never mind that. That's a story for another time, I think."

Attention snapped to Dietrich. He smirked; this was too easy. He crossed the boundary the strange creature was guarding, its yellow eyes sharp and watchful. Its gaze remained on the others while his tail lashed out to wrap around Lucinda in an instant. The sharp edges cut around her body, a thin line of blood seeping into her dress.

"I would not recommend moving." he chuckled and stepped behind her. The silence of the terrified guests made no change as he rested the edge of a dagger at her throat.

As the beast breathed, purple smoke diffused into the air, vanishing as it drifted upward with a certain elegance. Curved talons churned the ground, and his long ears twitched every few moments.

"Anton, step forth!" Dietrich demanded. A sophisticated fellow a few years younger than himself approached, and King Dvořák angrily followed, guards at his sides with swords drawn.

"I'd put those away if I were you." Dietrich tilted the dagger to the direction of one of the swords before cutting into Lucinda's skin very lightly. He smirked as he looked down to the droplets of blood emerging.

Dvořák called off the advance, and the guards begrudgingly stepped back.

"What is the meaning of this- my bride-"

Dietrich cut off Anton by shaking his head. "No need for interrogation. With this dear, innocent girl in such a position, you will be giving into my demands. Don't you remember me, Anton?"

"Release her!" he demanded.

The king grabbed his shoulder, "You know this man?"

"He murdered… my mother…"

Lucinda's tears continued to accumulate, draining down her face while the tail around her waist tightened as she struggled. She quickly quit her attempts to pull away, the cuts burning and terror rising. She watched through the blurred vision of tears as her fiancé slowly spoke of the evil this man had dealt.

Long ago Anton's mother had become involved with him when his family had reached a sudden financial crisis after his father was killed on the battlefield. The economy had collapsed that year, drought had ravaged the fields, and jobs had been scarce. It had seemed like a miracle when she had discovered Dietrich. Though his business was less than glamorous, on the side he often helped struggling families at a fair interest rate. What she had failed to discover was he had no lenience for late payments, and her inability to pay the loans in time cost her her life. He had spared the life of her children, but they would never forget the sight of their mother bleeding to death.

"I don't consider business to be murder," Dietrich chuckled, "And when the terms of my aid are not met, it's only fair I set an example so others may be forewarned if my words alone are not enough to portray my guidelines."

"Leave Lucinda out of whatever twisted-"

"Silence, Dvořák! Your wishes and commands mean little to me. I bow before no king, for I am my own god." Dietrich stated. He stood at Lucinda's side and brought one of her golden spirals into his fingers while he smiled. "She's a pretty one, isn't she? My offer is simple; which of you will be leaving with me? And don't bother with fighting. He's not my only back up." He gestured to the strange, feathered beast. "I ask for your bride or your niece, Anton. To make up for your family's long forgotten debt."

Eyes turned to the fair maiden with smooth, brown hair sitting beneath an apple tree at the edge of its grove. Her forearm was wrapped in a bandage, having been sliced open by a shard of glass within the temple. A priestess was at her side, and by now the other guests had left while they could, fearing the beast would end their lives at any moment.

Her dark green eyes, confused and fearful, met Anton's, and her uncle rushed to stand before her, waving guards over and calling out, "Not her!"

"Ahh, her then?" Dietrich smiled and fluffed up Lucinda's hair. The blonde girl's line of vision had fallen to her feet, though she was trying to conjure hope. Hope that everything would work out.

"How much money do you want?" Dvořák asked. He was as panicked as Anton if not more. He could see from Lucinda's grimace she was in pain from the constriction that beast gave, and her tears pained him. How could it be that he had tried so hard to keep her safe, yet now she was in this danger? He should have tried harder to get information out of Lucinda; what was it she had known about this?

"Money?" Dietrich laughed and stated, "It's far too late for that. I'd much rather have the life of one of these ladies to do whatever I wish with."

The king's brows furrowed, and a look of both greater anger and sorrow came to his face while his thoughts raced to determine the right choice.

Through the years, Anton had proven himself as a worthy comrade, invaluable and of great loyalty. It would not do well to end that friendship; his decisions as a king were superior to his decisions as a father, whether he liked it or not. Wrath, though, did boil. Anton had worked hard to meet success and amass his riches and influences in the realm, yet his family's debt could not be paid. It was ridiculous and injust, as the funds were now obviously there, but Dvořák would be the one to be seen as heartless in choosing to refuse protecting Lucinda. The hard truth simply was that he had more use for Anton than for her.

"I'm sorry, Lucinda." His words were softer than he had intended, and they pulled an estranged laugh from Dietrich that resolved to a pleasant smile as Lucinda pulled at the beast's tail, only succeeding in cutting her hands while she cried out, "Help me! Daddy, please!"

He was unable to look at her again, his eyes downcast and jaw clenched. He spoke lowly, "If you harm her-"

"You'll what? You have no power over me, lest you bring on your paramount military forces! And why waste your time on that? Thank you boys, it's been a pleasure doing business with you; consider your debt terminated, Anton. Seek vengeance if you wish, but know it will only end in failure and regret. I have more power over these lands than you can imagine, and to many I am king."

Lucinda's sobs came forth, but Anton was focused on holding his startled niece, whispering soothing remarks including promises she would face no danger.

"Why do you... want me?" Lucinda asked Dietrich between breaths.

"So he cannot have you."

A flash of violet and a circular glow of blue; with that they were gone, teleportation leaving behind a singed ring of grass amongst the mucous embedded land.


	4. Chapter 4

Disorientation quickly set in, and at a new location Lucinda immediately fell upon the cold, stone floor. She grasped her injured shoulder only to gasp and retract her hand, fresh pain surging through her flesh. The massive creature that had been holding her was no where to be seen, and a startled priest in long robes was before them, having been cleaning an old bookcase and placing new candles out.

"Good morning?" The priest slid a leather-bound book back into its place, and Dietrich explained his presence, "You will marry us."

"I will never marry you!" Lucinda dared exclaim, rising to her feet and taking steps back. "I give no consent, you strange, foul man; you cannot force me to marry you!"

"I can do anything I wish." Dietrich took a stride toward her to strike her face before slamming her into a close wall, blood oozing from the wound her teeth inflicted upon her inner cheek. His fist met her abdomen, and he looked back to the priest, "Don't make me repeat myself. I hate that."

Lucinda's sobs made the priest cringe as he shook his head, "I... I don't..."

"I can kill everyone you love. And need I make a small report on your illegitimate children? Not to mention your little embezzlement schemes throughout the years... Or that fellow- what was his name? Neil, was it?"

"How do you... Never mind! We will get this over with, and you will leave me be!" The priest declared.

"What a wise choice. You! Quit crying!" Dietrich took Lucinda's wrist, dragging her to the priest. She managed to slip out of his grasp only to be punched again. He then grabbed a fistful of her hair to pull while demanding, "Do as I say- or perhaps you want a nice, thick scar on your face?" He sneered.

"I don't understand! Why do you want this? Why marry?" she asked.

"So you cannot be removed from my care should your father try anything!" he answered and glared at the priest. "Well, get on with it! I don't have all day!"

"Right…" The priest nodded meekly, lighting candles then opening a prayer book. "May the blessings of the skies, the ancient ones, and all that is divine ignite to burn the shadows-"

"I don't care! Get to the important parts!" Dietrich shouted. "Forget it; just draw up the legal work." He pulled the book away to toss it across the room.

The priest sighed and opened a cabinet, collecting the needed supplies while Dietrich sent Lucinda to sit down and stay quiet.

By now Lucinda was too tired of crying anyway. Her eyes settled on a doorway, but trying to run would just worsen everything. From her chair against a wall she simple watched the shadows cast beneath the threshold as others passed through the corridor behind the wooden door.

It was awful to be so helpless and enslaved to fear. The situation was absurd, and she had never been so emotionally drained. She was already nearing a point of not caring, or at least wishing to be able not to care. What reasons could there be to have concern for what cannot be altered? Only terror and dread, both of which consume too much energy yet are difficult to release. Still her heart pounded, and she meekly approached the men when Dietrich called for her.

Without parental consent, the document required her signature. Vaguely she wondered if the priest could lose his job over this in the event her father found out. Although she was very displeased with this man, she supposed she could understand why he did not defy Dietrich; he certainly seemed to go through with his threats, and now he stood over her, thrusting the pen into her hand impatiently.

How interesting. If this was how the paperwork went, the majority of women would be unable to marry against their family's wishes, yet for her the blessing of education-

"Sign it, wench! I know you can write just fine!"

She scribbled her name in a rushed movement then threw the pen across the room. She turned to look up at him while exclaiming, "I was going to! You don't have to act like that! You clearly could see I was looking at it and about to sign it, unless you're just stupid!"

The anxious priest flinched when Dietrich backhanded Lucinda. While he finished his verifications after retrieving the pen the girl had flung, Dietrich stated, "You will see to it the document is submitted to the record keepers. Try anything devious, and I'll see to it your name is tainted beyond recovery and your loved ones drowning in their blood."

"Yes, sir," he replied and wound the scroll. He glanced at Lucinda, offering a brief look of apology and shame. He was sure allowing this man to have her would haunt him forevermore, but more people would suffer if he had refused this legal bonding.

The priest's brows rose when Lucinda finally attempted escape. Dietrich rushed after her, easily grabbing her bloodied shoulder before she could reach the door, her screams piercing the air. Pressure on the nasty wound caused her to collapse while all sorts of colorful words bombarded her. He gave a hard kick to her ribs, and with a few punches he knocked her out.


End file.
